Middle and Late Bronze Age Metal Tools from the Aegean, Eastern ...

aided by an abrasive such as sand or emery, but the primary advantage of the pendulum
saw over handheld implements was the length of the saw cut as well as the applied and
consistent pressure created by the swinging motion of the blade.
Traces of pendulum saw operations have been identified on anta blocks,
thresholds, posts and lintels at Tiryns, Mycenae (within the citadel itself and the Atreus
and Klytemnestra tholoi), and Gla. 477 The pendulum saw was originally purported to
have fashioned a large block from Boğazköy-Hattusha in the Great Temple’s
northeastern adyton, thereby providing a technological link between the Mycenaean and
Hittite worlds. 478 A reinvestigation of the Boğazköy tool marks by Seeher concluded that
a pendulum saw, like the one reconstructed by Küpper for the Mycenaean world, was not
utilized by the Hittites. Experimental cutting operations suggested that a short, handheld
convex saw created the tool marks on the adyton block. 479
To date, there are no known
physical specimens of this reconstructed curved saw, and it remains to be seen whether
Seeher’s analysis will be fully accepted by other scholars. The pendulum and convex
saws are hypothetical and based entirely upon the curvature of the impressions left on the
masonry blocks. Clearly the full range of saw types that were available to 13 th -century
craftspersons has not been recovered in the archaeological record.
The number of extant saws from the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean is meager
in comparison to the chisel and ax series. The tool is sporadic during the MBA, but more
prominent during the latter half of the second millennium. As with double axes, Crete
produced the greatest assemblage of metal saws—and the highest quality—with nearly
477
Küpper 1996, 22-25. The marks on threshold blocks at Gla are debatable as to whether they were cut by
a pendulum saw.
478
Schwandner 1991, 220-223 figures 9-10; Neve 2002, 93-94; Wright 2006, 33-34.
479
Seeher 2007; Seeher 2008a; 2009, 141-144.
189